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Being the Church

A principled (and practical) guide to tithing

Twice every Sunday the offering plate comes your way. What do you do? Do you chip in whatever you have in your wallet, do you have a cheque already written out, or will you send an e-transfer later in the week? Do you abide by whatever tithing tradition your parents instilled in you, or look around to see what everyone else does, or do you have your own rationale of how to give?

How we tithe is an intensely practical question for everyone, but perhaps one that you’ve not given much thought. Here are some biblical principles for tithing, followed by some practical suggestions, from my experience as a deacon and as a manager of a personal household budget, of how to apply these biblical principles in our offerings.

1. God owns everything

The first principle that we need to recognize when we consider tithing is the fact that everything ultimately belongs to God and not to us. As the Creator and Sustainer of all things and the Redeemer of His people, God not only is the ultimate owner of everything, but we owe Him everything. Like the servants in the parable of the talents (Matt. 25:14-39), we are merely temporary stewards of the blessings that God has given us.

The tithe – 10% – is a reminder of that fact. Abram offered the first recorded tithe in Genesis 14, when he gave a tenth of the spoils from the defeat of Chedorlaomer to Melchizedek, the priest of God Most High. Jacob also vowed to give God a tenth of everything (Gen. 28:22). This voluntary tithe was enshrined in God’s law in Numbers 18:21-24, when God commanded the Israelites to give a tithe every year to support the Levites and the tabernacle.

The disposition of our heart should not be “how little of my hard-earned money do I have to part with” but “how much of God’s blessings am I able to give back to Him?”

2. Our heart (not just the %) matters

We see cheerful and abundant giving throughout Scripture, whether it was the Israelites giving overabundantly for the construction of the temple (Ex. 35:20-36:7), the early Church freely sharing their possessions (Acts 4:32-37), and later congregations collecting for needy churches (Rom. 15:25-28, 1 Cor. 16:1-4, 2 Cor. 8:1-5, 2 Cor. 9:1-15).

It is entirely possible to give large sums of money to the LORD but without the right motivation. In Acts 5, Ananias and Sapphira sold a piece of property and gave some of the proceeds to the disciples. And yet they wound up dead because of their dishonesty. Instead, in 2 Corinthians 9:7, Paul famously reminds believers that

“each one must give as he has decided in his heart, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver.”

While it may be relatively easy to change our giving patterns, changing our heart from being a reluctant, to a cheerful, giver may be far harder. Yet we serve a God who delights more in a pure heart than external sacrifice, and we need to recognize that our giving should come from gratitude over God’s grace delivering us from our guilt. So we must set our hearts in the right direction when we give.

3. First fruits

The Bible also speaks to when we give. Men like Abel gave “the firstborn of his flock and of their fat portions” (Gen. 4:4) Throughout the books of the law, God commands the people of Israel to bring to Him the first fruits – not their last fruits – of their field and their flocks. Calling upon His people to bring their first fruits was a way that God set the priorities of His people: give to Me first and provide for yourselves after.

This practice also fostered a trust in God’s people that He would provide if His people obeyed Him and gave their first fruits to Him. In the days of Malachi, when the people of Judah were robbing God of their tithes and contributions (possibly because they thought that they were too poor to afford to tithe), God calls the people to:

“Bring the full tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house. And thereby put me to the test, says the Lord of hosts, if I will not open the windows of heaven for you and pour down for you a blessing until there is no more need” (Malachi 3:10).

Questions to consider

With these general biblical principles established, here are some more practical suggestions of how we can live out these principles in our tithing.

A. How much should I give?
This is everyone’s biggest question as well as the one that will impact our lifestyle the most. And the usual Christian response is to tithe (to give 10% of our income).

But, interestingly, most Israelites were commanded to give more than a 10% tithe. God also commanded a second tithe every year to fund ceremonial feasts and festivals (Deut. 14:22-27). And every three years, the people were to give a third tithe that was to go not only to the Levite but also the poor (Deut. 14:28-29). They were also to provide for the poor in other ways that would have a financial cost, such as allowing the poor to glean the droppings and corners of the field (Lev. 19:9). So, in reality, the Israelites arguably tithed as much as 23.33% annually. (I say “arguably” because some theologians like John Calvin thought that the tithe to the poor every three years was simply a further explanation of how to spend the first tithe to the priests and Levites.)

We live in a different time period today. The civil and ceremonial law apply differently to the Church today. We don’t support one thirteenth of the population of the Church with our tithes (as the twelve tribes had to support the tribe of Levi in the Old Testament). We don’t have a calendar of feasts and festivals that require another tithe. Various institutions of society, such as the government, do a lot of the work of providing for the poor (through the taxes we pay). And so that strict command to give away 10% (or 20% or 23.33%) of our income may not bind us today.

But I still think that a 10% tithe is a good minimum for us all to strive to give. Even if you’re a student working a part-time job, an unemployed man collecting EI, or a retiree living off a pension, aim to give at least 10% back to the LORD. In Mark 12:41-44, Jesus watched many rich people putting large sums of money into the temple treasury. We have no idea what percentage of their regular income they brought. Perhaps some brought 5%, thinking that the sheer amount of money that they gave was more important than the relative percentage of the income they gave. Perhaps some brought exactly 10%, giving just as much as the law required, no more and no less. And perhaps some brought 15%, priding themselves on exceeding the demands of the law. But then a poor widow comes in and gives two small copper coins. Jesus says to His disciples:

“Truly, I say to you, this poor widow has put in more than all those who are contributing to the offering box. For they all contributed out of their abundance, but she out of her poverty has put in everything she had, all she had to live on.”

In other words, the widow gave 100%.

While we may not be called to give every cent that we earn to the Church, in The Ministry of Mercy, Timothy Keller calls Christians to give “sacrificially, until their lifestyle is lowered.” Following the call in Galatians 6:2 to bear one another’s burdens, he suggests that “we must give so that we feel the burden of the needy ourselves.” In support of this, he quotes Jonathan Edwards, who said,

“If we be never obliged to relieve others’ burdens, but when we can do it without burdening ourselves, then how do we bear our neighbor’s burdens, when we bear no burdens at all?”

Keller’s book is a real challenge to Christians to give more than just 10%.

Those more well off could and should give more. In 1 Corinthians 16:2, Paul commands the Corinthians “to put something aside and store it up, as he may prosper.” Those whom God has prospered are in a position to give more than those who are struggling. To use an example, those of us who earn the median family income in Canada of $98,390 and tithe 10% would give away almost $10,000. Those who earn double that – nearly $200,000 – and still give 10% would give $20,000. The rate of giving is equal. And the richer family gives away more. But who feels the impact of that tithe more?

The average family.

They might have to give up a vacation, live in a smaller house, or pass on enrolling their children in organized sports. The comparatively richer family probably doesn’t have to give up these things and could give far more before they really began feeling it.

B. Tithing pre-tax or post-tax?
If you do decide to give a certain percentage of your income regularly to the Church (say, 10%), some might ask, “should that 10% be pre-tax or post-tax?” Our response to this question may reveal where God and His Church are on our priority list.

Most of us don’t get the full amount of our paycheque. Even before our earnings are deposited into our bank account or we pick up our paycheque, the government takes its share, roughly about 25% of our salary through income taxes, CCP contributions, and EI premiums. If we give 10% of our take-home paycheque, what are we implicitly saying? That the government is entitled to its share first and in full and God gets a tithe of our second fruits (and a lesser amount to boot).

So consider giving of your income pre-tax, before the government claims its share.

C. Tithing at the beginning or end of the month?
Perhaps this isn’t a significant question in your mind, but again it may reveal your heart. If you write a monthly cheque or pre-authorize any bank withdrawals to the Church on the last day of the month, what does that say about your priorities? Are your priorities to make sure that you have enough money to pay your rent, your grocery bill, and your credit card statement and then give some of whatever is left over to the Church? Might this be how you implicitly think about giving?

And so, consider determining, as soon as you get your paycheque, what you are going to give back to God and His Church, giving to God of your first fruits rather than your leftovers.

D. Can I let the offering bag pass me by?
This is another question that many people would raise an eyebrow at. As long as I give my 10%, who cares when I give it?

As a deacon, I saw some people would wave away the offering bag during a service, implying that they had nothing to give that service. Others would write a few (though substantial) cheques a few times a year but give little during the remainer of the year. When December rolled around, we would often collect three or four times our usually monthly donations in a single month, suggesting that some people only gave at the end of the year.

A handful of people in the congregation gave much smaller amounts every week. We as deacons often thought to ourselves that we’d save a whole lot of time if we didn’t have to count as much cash, or input a lot of small cheques, from these frequent givers. But this attitude of giving a little bit every week again reflects a heart that always has giving back to the LORD written on it.

And again, there are Scriptural and confessional hints that we shouldn’t let the offering bag pass us by each Sunday. As already quoted in part, 1 Corinthians 16:2, says, “on the first day of every week, each of you is to put something aside and store it up , as he may prosper.” Based in part on this passage, Lord’s Day 38 of the Heidelberg Catechism, speaking of what God’s will for us is in the Fourth Commandment, says

“that the gospel ministry and schools for it be maintained, and that, especially on the festive day of rest, I diligently… bring Christian offerings for the poor.”

In the Old Testament, there are also a few warnings against appearing before the LORD empty-handed, even if these passages are not strictly related to tithing (Ex. 23:15, 34:20; Deut. 16:16).

So don’t let the offering bag pass you by. Even if the total amount that you give in a year doesn’t change, give often.

E. How can my tithing go the furthest?
Finally, we can be good stewards of our money by taking advantage of charitable tax advantages. Our federal and provincial governments give significant tax credits (typically 40-50%) to encourage charitable donations. That means that you can get up to 40-50% of your donations back on your tax return every year. If you are the average Canadian family earning $98,390, tithing 10%, and giving away almost $10,000, that could mean a return of $4,000-5,000. We are called to give taxes to whom taxes are due (Romans 13:6-7, Mark 12:13-17, Matthew 17:24-27), but if there are organizations that spend their money more efficiently or that labor more in the Kingdom of God than the government (and I’m sure we can think of many such organizations), making use of our charitable receipts is good stewardship. Through these tax benefits we can give even more generously to the most effective and godly organizations around us.

The key to getting that tax credit is that your donations need to bear your name so that your church can issue a tax receipt. So write cheques or donate cash in envelopes with your name on it. Cash tossed in the collection bag won’t get you a tax receipt, but I’ve heard of some churches allowing congregation members to buy “tokens” through cheque or directed cash so that they can get a tax receipt. This allows parents and children to still donate via the offering plate while taking full advantage of charitable tax receipts.

Conclusion

However you decide to give to your local church, consider both where your heart is and what your hands are doing. As James 2:18 says, “Show me your faith apart from your works, and I will show you my faith by my works.”

That includes our tithing.



News

Saturday Selections – Mar. 29, 2025

Propaganda techniques (10 minutes)

This 1948 or 1949 movie highlights seven different propaganda techniques, and to be forewarned about them is to be forearmed. This could be great for a high school English class. Click the title above for the full 10-minute color presentation, or watch a 7-minute B&W abridgment below.

News or narrative – when the truth-tellers can't be trusted

What with images and video that can be faked so quickly and so skillfully, the biggest problem with our news consumption might be the speed at which we imbibe. When we just hit headlines, or read whoever the algorithm puts in front of us, we can't know if they are trustworthy – we can't know that this is true. So... slow down.

The slippery slope of theistic Darwinism

Howard Van Till was a physics professor at Calvin College who used to be "the pre-eminent example of an evangelical Christian scientist in the 1990s who defended Darwinian evolution."

Until he stopped being Christian.

Or even a theist.

Doctor Google, influencer moms, and the local Church

"I recently saw some Christian influencers offer a course on marriage, though they had been married for less than two years. They had paltry experience and undoubtedly little wisdom, but they did have a big platform. And many were eager to learn from them. God has carefully constructed his church so that, as much as we may benefit from those who are far off, we are likely to find the greatest and most credible help nearby. Your church has many seasoned saints who have spent their whole lives following the Lord and whose godliness is on display each and every time the church gathers."
- Tim Challies

A mid-life assessment

A pastor's wife discovers with age comes new:

"...temptations to impatience, ungraciousness, pride. This had surprised me then, but I now see this is true not just in ministry. I used to imagine I’d have to fight the same besetting sins my whole life, and while some old struggles still remain, I’ve found I need to also be vigilant for new ones."

Rend Collective: Build Your Kingdom Here

A song and a prayer.


Today's Devotional

April 3 - Why?

“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Why are you so far from saving me, from the words of my groaning? O my God, I cry by day, but you do not answer, and by night, but I find no rest.” - Psalm 22:1-2 

Scripture reading: Matthew 27:45-54

The word “why” is so compelling here. For here is no sigh of impatience >

Today's Manna Podcast

Manna Podcast banner: Manna Daily Scripture Meditations and open Bible with jar logo

Psalm 4 Rest in prayer: Meditations from the Psalms

Serving #801 of Manna, prepared by Rev. Cody Swaving, is called "Psalm 4 Rest in prayer" (Meditations from the Psalms) and is based on Psalm 4.









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Assorted

On a wife deciding to leave her husband

Dear Janelle, I received your letter yesterday, and had already heard from your brother and sister-in-law. They confirmed for me the very difficult and challenging situation you are in with your husband, and they said that they had encouraged you to write to me with your question. I was glad to hear from you. From what you wrote, and filling in details from them, you really are in a terrible spot – and I hope this letter is a real help. One of the things I like to do, if you don’t mind, is repeat back the presenting problem when I am asked about something like this. I do this to make sure that I have understood properly and, if I have, I want the person I am counseling to know that they were heard. This is often a problem that people in horrific situations have – they don’t feel like anybody could possibly be listening. You know that you need to leave your husband, but you don’t want to find yourself leaving God behind also. You know that your husband is behaving like a domestic tyrant, and so leaving him seems straightforward. But you have certain questions about some passages of Scripture, because you want to leave, if you leave, as an act of obedience. And that’s what it needs to be – obedience. If you leave your husband, you want to do so in the will of God. You don’t want to settle for some level of tolerated disobedience, or some Protestant version of venial sin. Two and three witnesses That said, your problem is that your husband is well-respected in your Christian community. He is an elder in your church. You believe that if you just “up and leave,” everybody is going to demand an accounting from you, and not from him. You have good reason for thinking that everybody would sympathize with him, and not with you. He is well-connected and well-liked in your church. You are not, and nobody knows that this is because of the insane restrictions he has placed on you. Now you know your Bible well enough to know that if you were to bring charges against your husband, the threshold to convict him would be two and three witnesses (Deut. 19:15, Matt. 18:16, 1 Tim. 5:19), and you don’t have that. Your brother and sister-in-law would be willing to testify, because they have seen a small portion of all this, but you believe that they would simply be dismissed. They don’t live in your town, they are related to you by blood, the elders who would be hearing this testimony are your husband’s close friends, and so on. In short, the deck is really stacked against you. But then, on the other side of the coin, you are not sure how much more of your husband’s heavy-handed hypocrisy you can take. Some days you feel like you are going to crater under his brow-beating, and other days you are simply exasperated by the two different faces he presents – to you on the one hand, and the world on the other. Sometimes you think you can go for two more days, tops, and other times you think you can manage it indefinitely. It all depends. He has never struck you, but there are times when you think he might. His fits of anger are unpredictable, and seem to you to be getting worse. You think that he is out of control, but if he answers the phone in the middle of one of his rages, he can turn off the anger like a switch. That indicates to you that there must be an element of deliberate malice in it. He is requiring more arbitrary and very difficult things of you, and you think it might be because he is trying to provoke you into doing something that is manifestly ungodly so that you will clearly be the one in the wrong, and will give him something to point to if the whole thing eventually blows up. Have I got the problem right? You know what his problem is, and it is an intolerable one, but you are not in a position to prove an accusation against him. Because you are dedicated to the authority of the Word, the fact that you can’t meet the standards for public charges (that justice requires) troubles you. Does that mean that you are not allowed to leave until you can prove it? The testimony of just one So this issue revolves around what justice requires in bringing a formal charge against someone, as distinct from what justice requires when a victim is simply getting out of range. But think about this for a minute. If you were attacked by a mugger or a rapist, you wouldn’t be thinking about the trial, and whether you had two or three witnesses available. You would just be thinking about getting away. Let me take an illustration from a law in the Old Testament concerning runaway slaves. “You shall not give up to his master a slave who has escaped from his master to you” (Deut. 23:15). While the circumstances are obviously not identical, they are comparable – close enough to provide us with an a fortiori argument. If this principle applies to slaves, and it does, then how much more would it apply to a Christian wife? So here it is. Suppose for a moment you lived in ancient Israel, in a time when slavery was practiced. A runaway slave shows up on your doorstep, and he tells you a horror story about what caused him to run away. The law here is straightforward. You may not return such an escaped slave to his master. Suppose a couple days later the master shows up and demands that his slave be returned to him. He says that the charges and accusations made by the slave are entirely false. The master denies them all, but even if he does this, the law nevertheless requires that the slave not be returned. This is the case even if it is just one person’s word against another. The escaped slave does not need to show up on your doorstep with two or three witnesses in tow. And this is where things get “curiouser,” as we might read in Alice, and this is where I want to derive a principle that we should apply to your situation. Suppose the slave wanted to press charges against his master, and let us suppose further that all the abuses he alleges against his master were in fact against the law, even against slaves, and were very serious – felonies, in fact. The slave still does not have two or three witnesses, and so this means that he cannot bring a charge against his (former) master. The master cannot be charged with crimes apart from independent corroboration, but it is nevertheless possible for the master to have a pay some kind of penalty for his behavior—that penalty being the loss of the slave. Now let’s translate. Your brother told me that they have already told you that you are welcome to come and stay with them. You have a safe place to go. Your kids are both away at college, and so you don’t have to worry about leaving anyone behind. You show up on your brother’s doorstep, and you say that your husband’s behavior has been ungodly and intolerable. According to this principle found in Scripture, they have every right to take you in, even though they have not heard your husband’s side of it. Let me say that again—there is a lower bar for a reception of a refugee than for charges to be filed against someone. This is not because we suddenly don’t care about Proverbs 18:17, about which we’ll have more in a minute. One of the first things that will happen – given what I know about your church’s practices in these things – is that one of the elders will contact you and say that you need to return. If you feel you need to bring charges against your husband, he will say, they will schedule a meeting for you to do so, and so on. At this point you should say that Scripture prohibits entertaining a charge against an elder if you don’t have two or three witnesses (1 Tim 5:19), and in fact you don’t have two or three witnesses. You are the only real witness. If you were to come back to charge him, it would simply be your word against his, and you know that they would be scripturally bound not to convict him, not to excommunicate him. You would support them in not convicting him. Because of your commitment to justice and due process, you have no intention of bringing a charge against anyone that cannot be independently verified. You also have no intention of putting up with it any further. Now if your departure shakes him up, and your husband acknowledges his fault, acknowledges what he has been doing, then your position has been independently verified, and it might be worthwhile returning in pursuit of some kind of marriage counseling and reconciliation. But if he does not humble himself, and simply denies everything, and you know that he is denying what you know to be undeniable, you are in no way required to return. But let me include something else here that really needs to be emphasized. Because I am saying that a wife in your position can simply “go,” then it follows that all any woman needs to do is just say she is in your position (whether she is or not), and there she has her automatic “get out jail free card.” What is to prevent a woman from applying this principle in a way that grotesquely wrongs an innocent husband? This is a fallen world, which means we must take risks. This is one of them. The biblical approach is that it is always to be preferred to allow a guilty person to go free, a guilty person to “get away with it,” than to ever penalize an innocent person. This is what necessarily happens whenever you insist upon two and three witnesses. What happens when just one person sees a person do some awful thing? You have to let it go; it is not actionable. You cannot convict anyone for anything on the basis of just one person’s say-so. It is the same kind of principle here. It is far better to let one lying wife go free without penalty than to keep an innocent wife in the penalty of living in a terrible situation. In the worst-case scenario, an innocent man loses a wife, but keep in mind it was a lying wife. When one person knows But let’s take that one-person-as-witness situation one step further. I am going to make up a very unlikely scenario simply in order to highlight the principle. Suppose I get called out in the middle of the night – as sometimes happens to pastors – in order to fetch somebody out of a place he ought not to be. I do so, and am escorting a straying sheep out of some nightclub and back to the parking lot. It is 2 am, and the nightclub is attached to a hotel. As I am helping him down the hallway, a room door opens and I see another one of my parishioners standing there behind a woman who is very much not his wife. He reaches over and slams the door. I know that I did not mistake him for somebody else. I go to confront him the next day, and he denies everything. In the interim he has lined up some other people to lie on his behalf. He was someplace else. His word against mine, and yet I know he is an adulterer. Would I have a problem serving him communion the next Sunday? No, I would not. He should have a problem with it, but I do not. I have no authority as a pastor to act publicly on the basis of individual knowledge that I cannot independently verify. But there is more to the story. While I cannot excommunicate anyone on the basis of one witness, even if that witness is me, there are any number of other things I can do. I have the authority to arrange my personal relationships on the basis of personal knowledge. I can refuse to go fishing with him. I can leave his employment. I can decline to go into a business deal with him. I can configure my own decisions on the basis of what I know. Someone might guess that there is something disrupting my fellowship with this man, but not because I am making a public charge. The person who guesses is drawing an inference from personal decisions. Application and misapplication This is what your elders will do if you leave. They will say that even if you are not making a formal charge of “abusive tyrant” against him, people will infer that you are alleging something very serious against him, and this is why they say you must come back and make your allegations in some public way. And they will say that if you can’t prove your allegations, such that he is excommunicated, then you have a responsibility to remain with him. But this doesn’t follow. It is possible that they will move to discipline you for leaving him without adequate biblical grounds. This is why I think they would be unjustified in doing so. “To the married I give this charge (not I, but the Lord): the wife should not separate from her husband (but if she does, she should remain unmarried or else be reconciled to her husband), and the husband should not divorce his wife.” – 1 Cor. 7:10-11 If you could prove that your husband were unfaithful (Matt. 19:9), or that he was utterly unwilling to have you as a Christian wife (1 Cor. 7:15), then the scriptural permission to divorce carries with it the permission to remarry. The innocent party is not bound in such circumstances. A brother or a sister is not under bondage in such cases. But if you cannot prove either infidelity or a rejection tantamount to divorce, then your circumstances vary accordingly. If he were proven to be guilty of either of these sins, and either unrepented sin would result in him being excommunicated, and declared not a believer, then that would leave you free. But if you cannot prove this against him, then the full extent of the action you can take is that of simply leaving. But, with that said, you can leave with your head held high. Your only options at such a point are to remain unmarried or to be reconciled to your husband. It is interesting here that Paul advises a woman not to leave if she can help it – “the wife should not separate from her husband.” That is his apostolic counsel, but it is clear from the context that it is merely advice. If she sees that his generally good advice is not pertinent to her situation, she is left free to leave without being hassled about it by the apostle. So if he would leave you alone in this decision, then so should the elders of your church. It is also interesting that Paul does not here get into the grounds for the separation. If there are not grounds for a divorce that allows for a subsequent remarriage, the church doesn’t adjudicate it. If the parties are willing, the church must provide pastoral counsel, but if there is simply a separation over intractable differences, Paul just allows for the separation, even though it may be one that has gone against his counsel – he did in fact urge the wife not to separate from her husband. Note also that it is the wife he is exhorting in this passage, meaning that in the larger scheme of things, he is assuming that wives could have plausible reasons for thinking they had to go. Husbands can be brutal, as the apostle knew. At the same time, I have known situations where the wife thought her husband was her central problem in her walk with God, but then after she left, her walk with God really fell apart. It turns out in that the husband wasn’t the big problem after all. You should also know that there is a cottage industry of busybody counselors, bitter women, who will want to swoop in order to enlist your grievances into their causes, whatever they are. Beware of them. Steer clear of them. One of your biggest challenges will be that of staying free from resentment and bitterness, and not only is their counsel usually bad, their resentments are contagious. That is the last thing you need. Running it by objective eyes One last thing. The Westminster Confession, in its teaching on divorce, says something profound and wise that I believe applies to your situation. They say that the corruption of man is such that we are liable to “study arguments” that would justify ungodly divorce, and they then go on to repeat the two standard justifications for a divorce – those being adultery and willful desertion. The word used in Corinthians for an unbelieving husband being willing to remain with his wife, or an unbelieving wife being willing to remain with her husband is suneudokeo – “pleased to be together with.” The semantic range of that word does not include your reports of what your husband does – constant anger, outbursts of wrath, sexually degrading behavior, ongoing manipulation and gaslighting, treating you like a slave, total control of all things physical and financial, and so on. You have no biblical obligation to put up with things like that. In a situation like yours, they say “the persons concerned in it not left to their own wills, and discretion, in their own case” (WCF 24.6). I believe you are in a position to leave – you have run it by others who are outside the circumstance, and who have an objective set of eyes. You have done this with both your brother and with me. Having done so, you should make a plan, and then pack your bags and go. The plan should include a list of your husband’s ongoing offenses against you, a list that should be shared with your counselor/s, and with the elders of your church when they contact you. Because you can’t prove them, you should share them with no one else, and above all you should not publish them online in any way. And so, given what you have described, my counsel would be for you to go. If you are concerned for your husband’s salvation – as you should be – you are far more likely to be used as an instrument to bring him to repentance as you pursue obedience to God this way. For the rest, leave the consequences to God. “For what knowest thou, O wife, whether thou shalt save thy husband” (1 Cor. 7:16). We will be praying for you, and God bless. Cordially in Christ, Douglas Wilson This a fictionalized account, which first appeared on Pastor Wilson’s blog dougwils.com and is reprinted here with permission. It addresses some of the issues raised by readers after the article "Justin Trudeau, and what the need for two witnesses would have us do" appeared earlier this month....

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Theology

Dealing with the Bible’s troubling texts

Whether it's passages about slavery, or gender roles, or the imprecatory Psalms, some sections of Scripture make Christians uncomfortable. God’s command to kill all the Canaanites in Deut. 20:16-18 is one example. Here we read: But in the cities of these peoples that the Lord your God is giving you for an inheritance, you shall save alive nothing that breathes, but you shall devote them to complete destruction, the Hittites and the Amorites, the Canaanites and the Perizzites, the Hivites and the Jebusites, as the Lord your God has commanded, that they may not teach you to do according to all their abominable practices that they have done for their gods, and so you sin against the Lord your God. When confronted with a text like this, a liberal Christian will offer a full-throated apology. “The text doesn’t mean what it says,” he’ll explain, “because the writer was confused about what God wanted Israel to do – God didn’t want anyone killed.” The conservative Christian, who professes the Bible to be the Word of God, knows better than to explain away the passage. If God said it, it must be right – that’s what our heads tell us. But our hearts might say something different – this is genocide! So we split the difference and instead of an apology, we are simply apologetic. We try to modify the apparent nastiness by focusing on whatever good we find, maybe noting that this was just a one-time command, for only a particular situation. And we’ll point out that this same God who is punishing the Canaanites is also the loving God who took our deserved punishment on Himself by coming to earth in the person of the Son. Good points, all. But there is more going on here, and being apologetic is getting in the way of understanding what God is telling us about Himself, and about ourselves in this passage. It’s only when we approach a troubling text like this in humility, with a desire not simply to get past it but actually understand it, that we can search its depths. A closer look at Deut. 20:16-18 will reveal that God’s command here should be understood in the context of Genesis 15:13-16. It’s there that God tells Abraham his ancestors are going to have to wait 400 years to take possession of the land of Canaan. Why so long? Because “the sin of the Amorites has not yet reached its full measure.” What was this “sin of the Amorites”? Leviticus 18 details it as including incest, adultery, homosexuality, child sacrifice, and bestiality. So, it’s by digging into these passages on the Canaanite destruction that we learn: God is holy – We minimize evil, especially when it’s our own. But God will not overlook evil. We think we’re not so bad – In objecting to the destruction of the Canaanites, we misunderstand our sinful nature. Sure, as Christians, we speak of deserving hell…but we don’t really believe it, not of ourselves, and not of the Amorites. We object to their destruction because we think they couldn’t actually have deserved it. But in sharing this passage, God wants to clear away that kind of delusion… about the Amorites, and ourselves. God is patient – He waited 400 years to deliver a deserved judgment, and today too, even as the West kills millions of its own unborn children each year, God is being patient. But as Proverbs 29:1 makes clear, if we stubbornly reject His rebukes, our destruction could happen suddenly. We should not put off our own repentance. God is gracious – There is a reason these lands were taken from the Amorites, but the Israelites hadn’t done anything to deserve getting them. It goes to show there’s lots to love in troubling texts! And if we avoid a passage like Deut. 20, then we rob ourselves of a better understanding of our own depravity, our need for a Savior, and the holiness and graciousness of God. Worse when we are embarrassed by such passages we are judging God and saying, at least implicitly, that He isn’t living up to our standards. That is an arrogance that we need to repent of. Now, that doesn’t mean we have to pretend there are no troubling passages in the Bible. It only means we need to recognize the fault lies with us, not God....